to_date/to timestamp going to BC

Can someone tell me if this is a bug with the date functions or am I using
them incorrectly?
If anyone has a workaround for this I could use some help this data
conversion.

dev=> create table test_date (dt varchar(100));
CREATE

dev=> insert into test_date values ('March 11, 1997');
INSERT 706020 1

dev=> select dt, to_date(dt, 'Month dd, yyyy'), to_timestamp(dt, 'Month dd,
yyyy') from test_date;      dt       |    to_date    | to_timestamp  
----------------+---------------+---------------March 11, 1997 | 0001-03-19 BC | 0001-03-19 BC

drw_dev=> select version();                           version                             
----------------------------------------------------------------PostgreSQL 7.1 on sparc-sun-solaris2.6, compiled by GCC
2.95.2
(1 row)